A FEW WORDS ON WORDS
ZOMBIES! NOW DO I HAVE YOUR
ATTENTION?

I noticed the other day that Jerimiah Clyde Hart-line, 19, has made quite a splash on the Internet, appearing in the list of bizarre and weird news stories.

I can’t say that I’m surprised.

You remember Mr. Hartline. He was the good ol’ kid from Tennessee who a few weeks ago is said to have hijacked a big-rig truck filled with strawberries; busted up a few cars and the people in them; and then jack-knifed and overturned on Interstate 15 in Temecula.

And the reason, he told police, was because he was being chased by zombies. They were hanging from the truck and, well, he was weaving side to side to shake them loose.

To bring you up to date, Hartline is still a guest in the Riverside County jail system, facing six different felony charges and perhaps having a few nightmares. His next court appearance is May 13.

We can only hope the people who ended up in the hospital that day are mending comfortably.

California Highway Patrol officers reasoned that Hartline was hallucinating on some drug they never identified.

Well, duh! Everybody knows there are no zombies on that stretch of the 15, especially not early on a Saturday evening, when all this happened. I’ve seen a few zombie suspects, though, often about 6 o’clock on weekday mornings. They usually straighten right up after that first cup of coffee.

What I find amazing, though, is the attention this story has attracted. Hartline’s 15 minutes of infamy has put him on websites run by CNN, Fox News 40, Huffington Post, Epoch Times and even the International Business Journal, to name a few.

The Internet version of the London Daily Mirror also has the story, complete with his police mugshot. The headline reads, “Zombie attack blamed for teenager ‘stealing and crashing articulated lorry in California.’”

I love it when they call an 18-wheeler an articulated lorry.

But on the subject of words, the Hartline story just shows the power of the word “zombie” on the human psyche, especially when it appears in a headline. Had it not been for that single, bizarre reference, what happened here in Temecula would have gone unnoticed by virtually everyone but us local papers and those hundreds of drivers stranded in traffic that day.

Words are a funny thing. They carry so much power. If the police had merely said Hartline appeared to be hallucinating, he wouldn’t be a minor character on the world stage. He’d just be another guy in the Riverside County slammer, and this would be just another sad story about drugs and the harm they can bring.

But I admit, if I see a word in a headline like mind-blowing, controversial, red herring, bizarre, shocking, gruesome, cheap, cannibalistic, sex, and, yes, even warthog, I might give it some attention. How else are we going to learn about the craziness in the world?

That’s just human nature, I guess, like running from zombies.

If you know of an interesting topic for a column or someone with a good story to tell, email Jim Rothgeb at jim.rothgeb@californian.com